1. Field
The present disclosure relates to a price comparison engine and more particularly to building and updating product databases for a price comparison engine.
2. Background
Generally, a price comparison engine maintains a product database, which contains information of products offered by various on-line stores. The information includes product names, identification codes for products, product prices, product descriptions, on-line stores offering products, and classifications of products. Typically price comparison engines maintain their own product classification system or adopt a publicly available product classification system for facilitating product searches and database management. For example, a cellular phone, a computer, and an MP3 player are respectively classified like appliance/cellular phone, computer/peripheral device, and appliance/audio/MP3. Also, multimedia files, news, and other information may be classified and stored along with their classification or category information. Generally, the product category and classification system has a hierarchical structure.
A shopping mall relay service or price comparison service provides its users with price information for products and on-line store information selling the products. When displaying the price information, the service provides its users with a link of the on-line stores. For providing the goods relay service, information received from on-line stores is stored in a database in a goods relay server.
The foregoing discussion in this section is to provide general background information and does not constitute an admission of prior art.